“A snowberry clearwing moth landed on my leg while at the Prairie Park prairie, a timely reminder that this week is National Moth Week,” Ken Lassman writes.

Gray coneflower, Ratibida pinnata, is a long blooming native perennial whose name refers to the gray cone under the brown disk florets, here being visited by a bumblebee interested in their sweet nectar.

Here is a working dung beetle, pushing a large marble sized globe of dung with its hind legs to a patch of dirt, where it dug a hole and buried it.

Pollinators continue to carry pollen from flower to flower while being nourished by the nectar produced by the light eating plants in the win-win interdependence between, in this case, a bee and a butterfly milkweed.

This Snowberry clearwing, a member of the sphinx moth family, is attracted by the beautiful purple prairie clover flower found blooming in area prairies this time of year.